Post-secular Age Research Articles

Interreligious Learning, Ricoeur, and the Problem of Testimonial and Hermeneutical Injustice

Abstract Ricoeur’s philosophy of religion as well as his suggestion that we may consider interreligious dialogue as a specific form of linguistic hospitality has inspired many to think through the challenges of interfaith learning in a post-secular age. I am one of those scholars who have found Ricoeur a particularly helpful conversation partner as I sought to create a nonviolent and transformative space of encounter in my interreligious classroom. In this article, I elaborate on how my lived experiences as an interreligious educator have made me wonder if Ricoeur’s philosophy of religion and his plea for interreligious hospitality are not actually limiting the critical potential of interreligious education. Ricoeur’s interreligious hermeneutics strongly resonates with a modern (Protestant) understanding of religion and its implicit, normative distinction between good (mature) and bad (immature) religiosity, which to this day belongs to the sociopolitical imagination of the majority in most Western European countries (this is certainly true for the Netherlands). It has been my pedagogical experience that this distinction between good and bad religion contributes to and reinforces testimonial and hermeneutical injustice in my classroom, which results in the marginalization of some of my students, especially those whose religious practice does not fit the understanding of what religion ought to be.

Faith, society and the post-secular: Private and public religion in law and theology

In pre-democratic – also pre-modern – times, religion had been at the centre of much of human life, filling the private as well as the public realm of people’s daily existence. However, with the change to democratic rule in major countries in the modern world (see, most influentially, Article 1 of the French Constitution after the French Revolution and the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, influencing all other democracies in their wake), religion has for the most part reflexively been sidelined from public life. Or has it? Does religion not still hold a special place in law in democratic societies, but now in reverse? Firstly, whereas matters of religious faith had throughout the greater part of human history been included in matters of politics, it is now as a matter of course of law excluded, purposely so. Religion is thus still a ‘special case’, a unique aspect of humanity when compared to all other matters, in law as much as in politics and other aspects of public life. Secondly, in the post-secular cultural climate dawning across the world, matters of faith (religion, spirituality) are no longer as stringently excluded from public life, which impacts directly on how religion is touched upon in law, sociology, philosophy, music and other academic disciplines too. Our dawning post-secular age is bringing something new. Two scholars, who have been doing foundational work in this regard, have done so fully in parallel, not taking cognisance of the mutualities in their academic contributions. Otto in Munich, Germany, has been combining his two areas of expertise, the Pentateuch in the Hebrew Bible and the sociologist Max Weber, to indicate the trajectory through history of democratic impulses from Ancient Near Eastern founding documents into the current era. Benson in Sydney, Australia, has on his part been drawing on his expertise in law as practised in Canada and taught in Europe, South Africa and Australia to indicate how, in inclusively liberal democracies, law cannot justifiably be used to exclude religion from the public domain, as has been the usual modern case. Drawing together these parallel contributions, Lombaard places these initiatives within the emerging post-secular climate, which augurs a different way of being religious or non-religious, publicly as much as privately, in democratic societies in our time.

The Third City: The Post Secular Space of the Dardenne Brothers' Seraing

Set principally in or around Seraing, an industrial region in decline just outside of Liège, in Belgium, the films of Jean-Luc and Pierre Dardenne marry geographical and historical-social realism with a series of ethical inquiries into such topics as immigration, unemployment, black market trading and petty crime. To date, critical commentary on the films has tended mainly to read the work of the Dardennes along two lines. The dominant approach uses the work of Emmanuel Levinas as a philosophical touchpoint in order to illuminate the ethical dimension of the Dardenne brothers' films. The second considers the political dimensions of their films. However a third, related body of writing has emerged in later years, one which understands in terms of their relation to what Jürgen Habermas (2006) , amongst others, has dubbed the postsecular age. This article locates the Dardennes' films at the intersection between the ethical, the political, and the postsecular, looking to the theologically-inflected philosophy of Gillian Rose to make the case that Seraing serves as the model of what Rose refers to as “the third city” – a postsecular site which challenges easy divisions between politics and ethics. As such Seraing is not, I shall argue, a mere staging post for the moral, political and spiritual problems posed by the films, but its cradle. Paying particular attention to the Dardennes' film Two Days, One Night (Deux Jours, Une Nuit, 2014) I demonstrate what an engagement that turns on existence with and within the city – an engagement that is both political and ethical – might look like.

Gregerson, Uggla, and Wyllers' "Reformation theology for a post-secular age: Logstrup, Prenta, Wingren, and the future of Scandinavian creation theology" (book review)

Gregerson, Uggla, and Wyllers' "Reformation theology for a post-secular age: Logstrup, Prenta, Wingren, and the future of Scandinavian creation theology" (book review)

Aesthetic Experience as a Spiritual Support of Homo Post-Secularis

The essay begins with an analysis of the cultural situation of humanity after its transition to secular mentality and a gradual disenchantment with secularism, which leads to the formation of post-secular mentality. It further suggests that aesthetic experience traditionally served as a bridge between the secular and the religious/spiritual and can serve in this capacity again in the post-secular age. It outlines the main traits of the post-secular person (homo post-saecularis). Two aspects of aesthetic experience are emphasized: its in-depth penetration into nature in an attempt to achieve unity with it, and the aesthetic observation of artworks. In pursuing both of these aspects, the post-secular person attempts, just as Romantics and Symbolists previously, to grasp something invisible beyond visible forms and escape from banal reality into higher spiritual realms of being, ultimately experiencing him- or herself as having a place in the universe. Aesthetic experience, if it is correctly understood and practiced, can give all this to the present-day post-secular person. The rest of the essay is devoted to a brief history of twentieth-century views of art, mainly in French and Russian thought, that foreshadow its post-secular role, and to the author’s authentic theoretical framework for understanding art and aesthetic experience, as well as his, equally authentic, program of how to achieve the post-secular function of art in practice for a present-day person.

Religious Socialism in Post-Secular Europe

ABSTRACTRecent scholarship on Religion and International Relations critically questions the secularist assumptions on which the discipline was founded. Yet many combinations of the religious and the political remain unexplored, particularly those that exist on the left of the ideological spectrum, such as religious socialism. Focusing on the International League of Religious Socialists (ILRS), the main religious socialist organization in Europe since the 1920s, I argue that European networks of religious socialists act as interlocutors between social democratic parties, minority religious communities, and the state, while defending political secularism from both secular and religious forms of extremism. This is a marked change from the Cold War era, during which religious socialists took up concerns of the global south, such as dependency theory and disarmament. In the conclusion, I discuss how religious faith, political secularism, and social democratic principles fit together in the contemporary religious socialist worldview, and consider the wider significance of religious socialism in a post-secular age.

Traditional Values as a Post-Secular Construct in the Post-Soviet Context: the “pillars” of the “Russian World” vs. Ukraine’s “Revolution of Values”

“T raditional Values” proved a construct, a noticeable marker of the post-secular age, one that is in demand in the post-Soviet context. The hybrid nature of these traditional values made them serviceable as a secret “weapon of mass destruction” in the hybrid Russia- Ukraine war. Non-critical use of this construct is dangerous, as it activates the religious unconscious, and quickens destructive collective reactions. It is for precisely these reasons that the author offers a deconstruction of the social- philosophical framework that legitimizes these values, and the very way they are produced in society. The article argues that the demand for tradition turns out to be the demand for the manipulative effect from the use of tradition. The same goes for religion in general – post-secularity is not interested in religion per se, but in those potentialities of religion that are able to endlessly magnify the effect of manipulating social consciousness. So the patrons manage to mobilize society by manipulating its traditionalist demands, but offering pseudo-morphosis, rather than a holistic and authentic tradition. In the case of the post-Soviet space, and the Russian-Ukrainian antagonism, we see the clash of two value-worlds: the Russian society, united around “traditional values,” and the Ukrainian society, joined by “European values.” In the former instance, values are seen as “pillars” of a closed society, in the latter – as expressions of dignity and freedom as the condition of an open society. However, in both instances the values confessed stake a claim to traditionality, or are inscribed into a tradition that a particular society perceives as its own, defining and continuous, normative and even sacred. As the author shows, the orthodoxy of “traditional values” is fairly problematic, so their religious and public- theological use must be supplemented with a critical philosophical analysis.

Reformation Theology for a Post-Secular Age: Løgstrup, Prenter, Wingren, and the Future of Scandinavian Creation Theology ed. by Niels Henrik Gregersen, Bengt Kristensson Uggla, and Trygve Wyller

Reviewed by: Reformation Theology for a Post-Secular Age: Løgstrup, Prenter, Wingren, and the Future of Scandinavian Creation Theology ed. by Niels Henrik Gregersen, Bengt Kristensson Uggla, and Trygve Wyller Joshua C. Miller Reformation Theology for a Post-Secular Age: Løgstrup, Prenter, Wingren, and the Future of Scandinavian Creation Theology. Edited by Niels Henrik Gregersen, Bengt Kristensson Uggla, and Trygve Wyller. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2017. 274 pp. This compendium comprises sixteen essays concerned with Scandinavian creation theology (SCT), a Lutheran stream of thought flowing from theologians K. E. Løgstrup, Regin Prenter, and Gustaf Wingren. The authors present this stream as a promising rivulet to [End Page 117] traverse in the post-secular twenty-first century, as it takes creation as the boundary and context for all theology (21). The work is divided into four sections. In the first, the authors explore the theology of Løgstrup, Prenter, and Wingren. In the second, they address the influences of Luther and Grundtvig upon SCT. Each essay in these two sections describes facets of SCT and orients the reader in the contours of this school of theology as a whole. In their introduction (chapter one of part one) Gregersen, Uggla, and Wyller provide an overview of SCT’s development and embodiment especially in its three leading lights, its indebtedness to Luther and Grundtvig, and its common universal features. These features include a concern for the givenness of creation, the belief that God is continually active in creation, and an emphasis on the importance of a common humanity (20–21). The authors argue for SCT as a Lutheran alternative path to Barthianism, post-liberalism, and radical orthodoxy in the twenty-first century on account of SCT’s deep roots in the liberating external Word of God and serious engagement with the creation made by that Word (19–20). The three essays, by Gregersen, Christine Poder, and Uggla, that follow this introduction flesh out the content of SCT by identifying the particular contributions of Løgstrup, Prenter, and Wingren respectively to this school. Gregersen delineates how Løgstrup articulated an ethic that takes into account not just the divine command in the law but the fact that life is an unmerited gift. Such givenness comes through the interconnectedness of life in inter-human relationships through which humans live out their vocation before God and others. Løgstrup rejected the Kantian notion of life as demand and reorients anthropology through the notion of givenness (41–42). Poder describes how Prenter argued for harmony between the works of creation and redemption. These complementary works are wrought by the Holy Spirit, the Spiritus Creator, who creates out of nothing both the old creation of the universe and the new creation of justification by faith in Christ (72). For Prenter, the original creation is real and sacramental, filled by the real presence of God in Christ in the midst of its fallenness, inextricably connecting this creation to the new (67, 83). [End Page 118] Uggla asserts that Wingren’s contribution to SCT used Luther and Irenaeus to reorient Swedish theology both towards creation generally and to theological anthropology specifically. Salvation, according to Wingren, is becoming human again. Redemption is a return to creation; it is not “purely spiritual” but real (107–109). While Løgstrup, Prenter, and Wingren may be the promulgators of SCT, Allen Jorgenson and A. M. Allchin demonstrate Luther’s and Grundtvig’s influence upon the movement. Jorgenson describes how SCT adopts from Luther the ideas that the imago dei has to do with the human being a part of continuing creation, that the eschaton will consist of a restored creation, and that God works in creation through created means. Allchin then identifies how SCT utilizes Grundtvig’s belief that the earth itself is created as the image of God and bearer of revelation. While the first and second sections orient the reader in the contours of this school, the essays in the third and fourth sections elucidate connections between SCT and contemporary topics and other streams of thought. Some authors address subthemes within SCT and their potential use within particular contexts and in view of particular issues, including ecology and phenomenology...

MAPRI, José; BLANES, Ruy; GIUMBELLI, Emerson; WILSON, Erin (Ed.). Secularisms in a postsecular age?: religiosities and subjectivities in comparative perspective. Cham: Palgrave Macmillian, 2017. 300 p.

O que se tornou o secularismo com a virada pos-secular? E essa a pergunta que norteia os organizadores da coletânea. Ha muito tempo o secularismo pauta os debates publicos e academicos sobre o papel e o lugar da religiao na contemporaneidade, mas o que se percebe atualmente e que ele nao so deixou de ser a unica opcao viavel, como tambem sua eficacia politica passou a ser questionada. Alias, a propria concepcao do que e o secularismo, e suas frentes de acao e reacao, nunca foi uma unanimidade...

On Postsecular Paradigm and Influence of Religion in the Field of New Medical Biotechnologies – Some Introductory Remarks

Over the last couple of decades the phenomenon denoted as “return of religion” has become the subject of discussion in the social disciplines and humanities. Various authors stress that the social relevance of religion is becoming more obvious in the public and political spheres of the contemporary secular societies, as well as in the international relations and world politics. According to some interpretations, these phenomena allow thinking and talking about the contemporarity as a “postsecular age”. The paper discusses the basic assumptions of the postsecular paradigm and points to the limitations of the very concept of “postsecularity”. At the same time, the aim of the paper is to point to the importance of the relationship between religion and policy in the field of the new medical biotechnologies as one, but not exclusive aspect of anthropological research of the religious responses to the new possibilities raised by the biotechnological innovations.

Luther’s Biblical Hermeneutics as Ethics

This article examines a thread that runs through Martin Luther’s biblical and catechetical writings: his appropriation of a Messianic logic in light of a creedal interpretation of the whole of Scripture. Situating my case in relation to recent philosophical scholarship on the apostle Paul, I contend that this biblical hermeneutic may well be Luther’s signal ethical contribution for our age. Drawing on the solae ( sola gratia, sola fide, sola scriptura, and solus Christus) and relating them to three themes central to his biblical hermeneutics—the Word of God, Scripture, and the Creeds—I discuss how he develops (1) a Messianic ethics that intrinsically links faith and love in relation to (2) the biblical motifs of command and promise and (3) the Christological themes of cross and incarnation. I conclude by discussing the relevance of Luther’s biblical hermeneutics for a post-secular age.

Diplomacy, Papacy, and the Transformation of International Society

Gone are the days in which analysts had assumed that religion would no longer play a role in politics, let alone international politics. We live in a post-secular age, and religion is back—yet it o...

分離・区別・一致 : キリスト教哲学論争にみる真理の諸相(真理・政治・普遍性-ポスト世俗化時代における神学の真理性-,パネル, 第73回学術大会紀要)

分離・区別・一致 : キリスト教哲学論争にみる真理の諸相(真理・政治・普遍性-ポスト世俗化時代における神学の真理性-,パネル, 第73回学術大会紀要)

Between A Rock and a Hard Place: Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age, written by Elaine Graham

Between A Rock and a Hard Place: Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age, written by Elaine Graham

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age, written by Elaine Graham

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age, written by Elaine Graham

The hermeneutics of religious understanding in a postsecular age

The argument of this article assumes that religious literacy is urgently needed in the present geopolitical context. Its urgency increases the more religion is viewed in opposition to criticality, as though religion entails an irrational and inviolable commitment, or leap of faith. This narrow view of religion is reinforced by certain rather dogmatic secular framings of religion, which require any and all forms of religious expression to be excluded from public life. Excluding religion from the public has the unfortunate effect that religiosity can take extreme forms with little social mediation through political deliberative cultures. Such approaches do not support religious literacy, but tend to generate increasingly polarized and fractured debates about the place of religion in society and education. In contrast to the attitude that seeks to privatize religion, I argue that religions are fundamentally public facing, not least because they act as social institutions that bind communities together. I argue that it is the hermeneutical traditions immanent to religions themselves that must inform the ways that religions can appropriately inform public life.

Secularisation: process, program, and historiography

ABSTRACTToday's dominant academic use of the term ‘secularisation’ refers to an epochal process that transformed a society based on Christian faith to one grounded in human reason. This paper argues that ‘secularisation’ had not been used in this sense prior to the 1830s, and that no such process has been shown to have taken place in early modernity. This new use of the term was in fact internal to rival secularising and sacralising programs. The notion of an epochal rationalisation of society was thus invoked by secularists seeking to turn a factional campaign into an historical process. Their sacralising opponents employed the same strategy when they claimed that this process contained a desecularising counter-current, or that secularisation was secretly grounded in an alienated religion whose de-alienation held the promise of a post-secular age. This suggests that until they can adduce evidence of an epochal rationalisation of society in early modernity, histories of secularisation should be regarded as disguised program-statements for rival cultural-political factions in the present.

Religion, Science, and Technology in the Post-Secular Age

Religion, Science, and Technology in the Post-Secular Age

Постсекулярный век неомодерна. Ближневосточный извод

Постсекулярный век неомодерна. Ближневосточный извод

Challenges for the Catholic Intelligentsia in the Post-Secular Age of Central Europe

Challenges for the Catholic Intelligentsia in the Post-Secular Age of Central Europe